OTC Drugs R Us
I just threw out the unused portion of a sample pack of Celebrex. I'd seen the stuff advertised on TV but I guess I thought it was allergy medicine, so when I had some tight back muscles a couple of weeks ago and was laying on the floor with a tennis ball wedged into my spine (which gave me the heavenly sensation of having someone's fist pushed directly into the muscle knot using somewhere in the neighborhood of exactly the right amount of pressure to make tears spring from my eyes), I was surprised when Jack showed up with a fancy prescription NSAID. He got it off a friend who wouldn't be caught dead without a full pharmacy at his fingertips. I would say that this friend's family doctor must be a real pushover, but after my experience of going to the walk-in clinic, asking for a drug that I may not have necessarily needed, and then getting it, I have come to realize that for years I've been mistakenly operating by the notion that doctors aren't allowed to just wing it. Or put another way, it was news to me that some doctors will hand out whatever a reasonably intelligent-looking patient asks for. When I was a student in the U.K. way back before the Morrissey-Marr alliance was severed, I went through a fairly severe emotional crisis at one point and the only place I could think of to go for help was the student clinic. There I described my plight to a surly bitch in a white lab coat who wanted to know why I'd been so stupid as to waste her time with a non-physical complaint. Disgusted by the tears wetting her floor, she grudgingly handed me a tissue and then handed me off to a younger and more sympathetic colleague. When I screwed up the courage to ask doctor #2 for something to help me calm down and sleep, shook her head and kindly told me that this wasn't America, doctors didn't just hand out sleeping pills willy nilly in that green and sceptered land. Apparently the British fall asleep merely by pulling up their bootstraps and going down the pub for a pint or seven. That's what I did, anyway.
So anyway, it was a couple of weeks ago, my back was sore, I took the Celebrex, I had sex with my husband, and then I made some eggs for lunch. It didn't take long for me to start feeling sort of ill, but I didn't connect the queasiness to the medication right away. I was sad to realize that it had finally come to this: sex makes me sick. No, actually I wondered if maybe the eggs had been off. I dizzily took to my bed for the next fourteen hours, interrupted only for a couple of late night barfing expeditions to the land of cool tile and regrettably unscrubbed porcelain.
It turned out that the sore back muscles were a precursor to a mild viral infection that left me with a dry cough for the next few days, and despite the fact that I know, I know, I know to avoid extra-strength everything, I was too lazy to go up to my acupuncturist for a bottle of Wise Judge (you can laugh, but that shit works) to loosen the grip of my cough, so I started swigging NyQuil at bedtime instead. Seriously, I just came out of the NyQuil coma to write this.
So anyway, it was a couple of weeks ago, my back was sore, I took the Celebrex, I had sex with my husband, and then I made some eggs for lunch. It didn't take long for me to start feeling sort of ill, but I didn't connect the queasiness to the medication right away. I was sad to realize that it had finally come to this: sex makes me sick. No, actually I wondered if maybe the eggs had been off. I dizzily took to my bed for the next fourteen hours, interrupted only for a couple of late night barfing expeditions to the land of cool tile and regrettably unscrubbed porcelain.
It turned out that the sore back muscles were a precursor to a mild viral infection that left me with a dry cough for the next few days, and despite the fact that I know, I know, I know to avoid extra-strength everything, I was too lazy to go up to my acupuncturist for a bottle of Wise Judge (you can laugh, but that shit works) to loosen the grip of my cough, so I started swigging NyQuil at bedtime instead. Seriously, I just came out of the NyQuil coma to write this.
15 Comments:
Ahhh, classic Denis Leary! That clip brought me back to the days he used to rant directly to Richard Gere, warning him that he'd like a little bit of Cindy Crawford for himself on MTV promos "I think you hear me knockin'...! Anyway, I sure hope after all of THAT you feel much better soon!
Jules
House of Jules
Oh God, get well soon.
OK, I have your solution: you need a back roller. It's like TWO tennis balls, perfectly aligned next to your spine, and it is AWESOME. Your back will love you.
Don't make any fucking plans!!
xo
Ahhhh. Yes, nothing has changed here. The last 4 times I have visited my GP with a hopeful look in my eye and a burning pain in various assorted parts of my anatomy, I have departed his office with zippity except (I presume) his best wishes. I can't get antibiotics out of the guy, except possibly at gunpoint.
Hubby, God bless 'im, belongs firmly to the pints & bootstrap camp. And what he denies himself in sympathy, he is not about to lavish on anyone else, either.
American SIL turned up at our place last Christmas with the biggest bulging bag of prescription drugs we've ever seen, despite the fact that none of them were currently even a tiny tad ill, and proceeded to offer them round like sweeties. You even have antibiotics on your band aids! Gosh. Gimme.
PS
You were lucky to get your paws on that tissue, you know. I got given bed-liner paper and handtowels to mop the features with during last miscarriage. Oh, we do heart the NHS.
You know what offsets the Nyquil nicely? DAYQUIL. I think it has crack cocaine in it - the perfect pick-me-upper when you're feeling rundown.
The Wise Judge stuff sounds cool. I'm a Zinc and Emergen-C girl, myself, but I'll try anything when my body starts to cannibalize itself to produce phlegm.
"Are you drunk? No I have a cold."
Oh, I'll be using that one...
wait wait - morrissey and marr did what?!
We were in Paris with my father-in-law. He needed a doctor (mostly for reassurance).
He ended up with a GROCERY BAG of prescription meds. For less than a hundred bucks.
I think he's planning to emigrate...
Ah, Nyquil... My sweet, sweet Nyquil...
Feel better soon.
I'm sorry you got short shrift from our doctors in the UK. They're all bastards, except for any that may be reading this. But you're not far wrong: I believe a brisk walk and a few pints of Guinness in a good old pub cure most things.
I just ranted for another paragraph, then deleted it.
Get well soon.
OMG! I have tears running down my face! Can you make more posts after drinking NyQuil? :)
I am so moving to the UK... I hate that whenever I go to the Dr, I get more drugs. Stupid asthma..
I'm back again (and laughing out loud at the photo of Peewee peeing) because I was talking to Ian about this post over dinner.
Years ago, he went to one of our typically useless British doctors because he couldn't sleep. He'd be up most of the night with a racing mind, then paralysed with exhaustion the next morning. It really felt like that to him - a paralysis. It was like he wasn't there, like a different him had taken over. He had a history of depression and he just wanted his brain to work properly so he could get on with life, get up for work in the morning. He explained all this to the doctor.
"Well," said the doctor, "you've either got to stop doing it, or learn to live with it."
(He lived with it, until he stopped doing it.)
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